Contents

Early History

1912

She was the granddaughter of Johnathan, and inherited one of his rings, which prevented her from dying of supernatural causes. After being revived a few times, Samantha started growing a dark ego and went on to kill members of the Founding Council.

1922

She confesses to the murders and gets locked up in an asylum. She tried to do a lobotomy on herself with a knitting needle and bled to death, finally dying for a final time due to it not being caused by something supernatural.

Throughout The Vampire Diaries Series

Samantha Gilbert was the granddaughter of Johnathan Gilbert and inherited one of his rings that prevented the user from dying via supernatural causes. She was first seen at Zachariah Salvatore's funeral where, along with Marianna Lockwood, she met Stefan. She then told him that Zachariah was murdered despite Marianna's attempts to convince her otherwise.

It was later revealed that Samantha was actually Zachariah's murderer and was the other founding family members murderer too in 1912. Although never caught, she confessed in 1922 and was locked up in an asylum, though this was not public information. Later, she tried to do a lobotomy on herself with a knitting needle and bled to death.
Damon Salvatore thought he had killed her back in 1912, until he learned this information in the present day, realizing she was wearing one of Johnathan Gilbert's rings.

Much like her grandfather, she kept a journal in which she exposed the fact that she had no idea what she was doing when the murders were committed and, reading between the lines, Elena and the Salvatores figured out that she had committed the murders while wearing the Gilbert ring, just as Alaric Saltzman was and he was the main suspect in the murders that had been occurring against the Founding Family members in 2010. Specifically, just like Samantha, he suffered from blackouts (that he had originally attributed to alcohol) at the time of the murders.

Personality

Samantha was polite and had a mind of her own. Despite Marianna's attempts at convincing her of Zachariah's death, she firmly believed he was murdered.

Physical Appearance

Samantha was a beautiful, young woman with dark, brown hair and brown eyes.

Trivia

Despite The Gilbert Rings being passed to the eldest Gilbert son, Samantha had one despite her sex. Most likely it was inherited from her father or grandfather Johnathan to protect her from the supernatural. We conclude from this that she knew about vampires, died and was revived several times. She eventually started going crazy and murdering Members Founding Families due to this. These are known to be negative side effects from wearing the ring.

Alaric had Samantha's former ring and like her killed Mystic Falls Council members, like Samantha did before him 99 years ago.

She is the first chronologically Gilbert to be "killed" by Damon Salvatore. The first seen on the show was Jeremy Gilbert and second one was John Gilbert. All of them were revived by the Gilbert Ring they each possessed after Damon "killed" them.

Its highly presumed Damon Salvatore was not the first supernatural being to kill her, because one has to die a few times before being affected by the ring. The effect caused by the rings is the loss of memory, and extremely dangerous and insane actions to kill. This indicates that she has been "killed" few times before 1912 when she was murdering other Founders of Mystic Falls.

She is the second character to have the name Samantha, the first being Samantha Gibbons.

In the books, Samantha is mentioned by Meredith Sulez. Samantha was a vampire hunter and helped Elena, Stefan, Meredith, Damon, Katherine and Zander during the search of the Old Ones, but eventually she was killed by the servants / vampires of the Old Ones.

With confirmation that human souls are found in the dimensions, she either found peace or went to Hell.

Quotes

Samantha: (To Stefan) "Be careful Mr Salvatore. It's not a good time to be a founder in this town."

Samantha: "I don't feel like myself. I am losing time... As though I am going mad. (Voiceover from one of Samantha's Diary entries.)